Net Zero Energy Community in Calgary, Alberta

We don’t currently have plans we can offer unfortunately. There are Passive House and LEED certified prefab kit homes available that may meet your needs, other than that we would recommend you look through our building guide pages to learn high performance building techniques.

An ‘Eco Home’ could take many different forms, but they would share a few common threads. You could therefore look at home plans online for inspiration, then once you have a general design you find appealing, you could then green home building techniques to that design. We would recommend you first start with determining exactly how much space you need. In general, smaller homes use less resources and less energy than large ones, so the smaller you can build the better.

And choose your materials carefully – natural insulation materials and non-toxic building materials protect indoor air quality, and will usually pollute less during manufacturing. A green home would be an energy efficient home, so be sure to have a well-insulated building envelope.

Here is link to our Green Home Building Guide,  the Ecohome planning and design page is a great place to start, and as you get further into you planning please feel free to check back with us and post a more specific question in our advice column and maybe we can help guide you further.  

We are glad to hear you read the article 'Do Earthships work in cold climates?' before building one. there is no real 'heating concept' for Earthships in Canada,  the Earthship organization, as near as we can tell, still clings to the delusion that an Eartship stays warm in all climates, which is patently false.

As for the water collection design of an Earthship, it is not a system that makes financial or ecological sense in areas with accessible ground water, but if you don't have that, then by all means investigate the Earthship rainwater collection and purification system. We would not recommend following it to the word as they have a pattern of glossing over deficiencies in their design, so do other research as well, but there may be something of value in their water system but we would recommend omitting anything in terms building an attached greenhouse and using the water there. 

Our prefab kit homes are not yet available out west unfortunately, but if you sign up as an Ecohome member (which is free and we don't spam endlessly or share addresses), you will get notice as soon as they are available in your region.